A Brother's Duty
by Jedi-Princess-Solo
Summary: [vignette] Owen Lars makes a promise when he takes in his stepbrother's infant son


**A Brother's Duty

* * *

**

We were brothers, you and I.

Not by blood, of course, but brothers just the same.

Strange, when I hardly knew you.

We were different men, with different lives, and I wonder if we would have gotten along had we been boys together in our childhood.

Then again, you were a particularly kind and friendly child.

Or so Mom told me.

She loved to talk about you, to tell stories of the seemingly impossible feats you'd done in your youth, about the way you were born to walk the skies, how you loved to tinker with anything you could get your hands on.

Threepio was more than proof of that.

Mostly, though, she talked about your eyes.

About how they were the most beautiful blue she had ever seen, how they seemed to pierce right through you and see into your very soul.

That was the first thing I noticed about you when we met.

Your eyes were every bit as intense as she'd said.

There were so many things I wanted to ask you then; why you'd never sent Mom a single holo, what Coruscant was actually like, how many planets and stars you'd been to, whether you regretted going away with the Jedi the way you had.

There was never time, though.

Our meeting was brief, you arrived as swiftly as the setting sun and departed just as quickly after returning Mom's body to us from the Sand People.

Your Master was in danger, you told us.

And I could not help wondering bitterly why you rushed off at once to save this Obi-Wan fellow, but waited so long to come for Mom.

I don't blame you for leaving in the first place. You were only a child, just nine years old, and the Jedi dangled this grand adventure in front of you- how could you resist? But when you returned, when you came back to bring Mom's body home, you should have stayed.

Tatooine was your home, and we were your family.

Mom made us family.

Dad would have loved to have you. He loved you without ever knowing you, just because Mom did. She talked about you so often that it was like we did know you, but when you finally showed up you weren't the little boy she remembered.

You were nearly a man, shoved into the Jedi mold.

Would she have recognized her little boy within the tall, brooding figure that came seeking her?

Beru likes to think that she did, that you got there in time for Mom to look upon you one last time, to see the man her baby had grown to be just once before she slipped away.

And that she watched over you from afar ever since.

I suppose she thinks that you're now doing the same, keeping a phantom vigil for your son, even as he sleeps through the roar of the harsh winds whipping across the rough walls of our home.

Jedi are not allowed attachments of any kind.

And yet you have a son.

I don't pretend to understand what happened, but I can guess who the mother was.

Her name was Padmé, wasn't it?

The girl you brought with you when you came to find your mother? She worried for you the whole time you were out looking for the Sand People, clearly a woman in love. A girl like that, classy and from an upscale world like Coruscant, must have found our moisture farm dull and pitiful, but she was kind and friendly, and helped Beru with dinner that night.

A good woman.

Obi-Wan Kenobi says she died in childbirth, which is more than he would tell us about your own passing.

Perhaps it was too difficult for him to speak of it this soon, he was clearly a man devastated by grief, heart shredded and soul ripped to pieces. Your death must have hit him harder than any other, which is to be expected if what they said about you two on the HoloNet is to be believed.

Even out here in the Outer Rim we heard about your exploits.

Whenever I made it into Anchorage, I would stop in at one of the local cantinas to see what news there was on the HoloNet, and your name and face was often flashing across the screen.

The Hero Without Fear, they called you.

I knew better.

You were afraid of losing the people you loved, of failing Mom.

Fears that the Jedi Order could never have understood, because they don't know what it means to have a family.

You did, though.

And you should have left that mess while you still could, with a baby on the way. What kind of life would there have been for the three of you, anyway? The Jedi take children from their parents, you know that better than anyone.

Did you have a plan, anything at all?

Not that it matters now.

When the news came that the Jedi had been declared traitors, enemies of the Republic, Beru wept.

She knew, as I did, that if you weren't dead then you would soon be meeting that fate, along with all the other Jedi who had managed to escape the attack on the Temple.

I thought we might get a visitor.

Someone bearing the news to the only relatives you had, perhaps with a body in tow.

We would have buried you beside Mom.

I never dreamed we would be contacted by your former teacher, with some crazy story about a baby- your baby- needing a home. You had been killed in battle, probably fighting until the bitter end for a cause that died out a long time ago anyway, and the mother died bringing the babe into the world.

We were the only family he had.

How could I refuse?

This baby was your son, and you were my brother.

Shmi's only grandchild, now orphaned by the cold, merciless galaxy.

I could not turn him away, and Beru's face lit up at the prospect of having a child in the house. We'd just found out, a few months before, that we can't have children of our own. The news devastated Beru, as if her wings had suddenly been broken forever.

But Luke has changed that.

Your son has only been with us for a month, and already he is the center of Beru's world.

He will be loved with us, and well cared for.

It will never be the same as having his real parents, you and I both know this personally, but he will have a family who loves him, to protect him and keep him safe.

From the Empire, from the Sand People.

And from the Jedi.

I won't let him meet your fate.

I won't let another Skywalker die in the name of the Jedi or the Force.

Luke will be a farmer, like the rest of this family.

It might not be as exciting a life as the one you had, but it won't be as dangerous, either. There will be hard work, the chores need to be shared equally on the moisture farm, but there will always be food on the table and clothes on his back. Luke will grow up safe, sheltered, strong and healthy with us.

But more importantly, he will grow up.

The life that the Jedi would put before him would only lead to certain death.

I made myself a promise, when we took the boy in, that he would not follow in your footsteps, no matter what that fool Kenobi said.

I made Mom a promise that I would try to be as good a foster parent as she had been to me.

And now I make you a promise, Anakin.

Luke will be safe in my care. I will protect him in your stead, shelter him from those who would do him harm, whether they be Imperial, Jedi or the Force itself.

But above all else, I will love him for you.

That is my duty as a brother.


End file.
